found in some of the other answers is quite elegant, it doesn't perform as nicely as it looks. First off, the sort transforms an O(n) search search operation into an O(n log n) one. Secondly, the sort solution has n log n hash look-ups. Hash look-ups are very good for certain operations, but when working with the entire hash, look-ups will be slower than using each, keys, or values to iterate through the data structure. This is because the iterators do not need to calculate the hashes of keys, nor do they need to repeatedly walk through bins to find the values. And the overhead is not constant, but increasing as the hashes get larger.